I suspect many will disagree with how I categorized this story. I don't feel it fits well into any of the categories perfectly.
The sex depicted is hetero and everyone is over 18.
LarryInSeattle bears the burden of dealing with my mistakes. Give him a hand and let me know, politely please, what works and what doesn't.
I hope you enjoy the story.
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As the elevator's strangely sexy robotic voice intoned the passing floors, I tried hard not to get my hopes up. She wasn't there every day, not even most days. She might not even be working today. Or maybe, facing a meeting deadline, she was still at her desk, foregoing her morning break. I hadn't seen her yesterday. It wasn't impossible to imagine that I'd never see her again. People move, take new jobs, or change their habits, nothing is constant.
The ever helpful elevator announced we had reached the mezzanine and that she (the elevator had a female voice) was "going down". The bitch is a tease. I joined the crush of bodies exiting the elevator. Like some primordial slime mold, we split into three tendrils. Some headed for the part of the plaza reserved for the smokers in the building. Another group arced toward the bakery, which my scale had been telling me to avoid, and the largest, the tendril of bodies I moved with, headed toward Starbucks.
My heart, already pounding, kicked up a notch. She was in the line waiting for her coffee, or chia or whatever it was she drank.
The Starbucks was well acquainted with the mass of caffeine freaks that surged out of the elevators this time of day. They were staffed and ready. Many of us, longtime regulars, had our drinks waiting. I quickly made it up to the counter, touched my phone to the credit card reader, and was rewarded with my small dark-chocolate-skim-mocha-no-whip. I knew where she sat. The tables were strangely unoccupied, despite the throngs of people who a short time earlier had crowded the area. The majority returned to their offices, to sip and browse or sip and work at their desks.
She did not. She always walked around to the left, to a narrow curved tail of the mezzanine that overlooked the atrium and only had room for two tables. There were plenty of open tables but my brain was on fire. I had considered approaching her since I first spotted her weeks ago but more recently my interest and courage had been sparked enough for me to take action.
I ought to pause for a moment and make something perfectly clear. I'm not a stalker. I had certainly noticed her. I was certainly interested in her. And I had recently decided to make my interest known but if rebuffed, that would be the end of it. Oh, no doubt she'd linger in memory and fantasies but I would not push it. I would offer but I would not pursue.
"Hi, mind if I join you?" I asked but taking a seat before she had time to reply. She looked more startled than annoyed. I took that as a good sign. "You work at Massey?" Massey, a title company, was the primary occupant of the floor she exited the elevator on.
"Huh? Um, no. Peabody's," she replied. Her face remained free of irritation, not at all the look mine would have shown if a stranger plopped their ass down at my table in a mostly empty room. Peabody's was a small independent publisher that had to be a pet project of someone with a lot of money. There was no way they made enough in publishing to cover the rent, much less employees.
"Cool. You a writer?"
"No. Copy editor."
The spark that lead to me sitting here occurred earlier in the week. I was behind her at Starbucks. She had an e-reader in hand. I wasn't trying to be nosy but I found myself reading over her shoulder. She was reading a smut novel. Torrid prose, lots of sighs and moans, the type of book my mother called "bodice rippers". My mom had had a stack of them that she would never let me read. I was amused that a woman who turned up her nose at a French kiss on one of her soap operas enjoyed reading smutty romance novels. As my eyes skimmed the page I realized whatever Ms. 10th Floor was reading, it was a step beyond a romance novel. My eyes hopped from "cock" and "thrusting manhood" to "pussy". This was straight-up porn.
"Peabody's is a publisher, right?" I asked after taking a sip of my mocha. She had already turned to continue staring out over the atrium and contented herself with a nod of the head.
"You like working there?"
She shrugged. Her hair was a deep red. The light streaming into the atrium seem to get caught in it, making it glow. Her skin was fair, as you would guess with a red-head. She was one of the lucky ones, however because, other than a pinch of freckles sprinkled across her nose, her pale skin was flawless. Half of her face was in sunlight, half in shadow. The eye in the sunlight sparkled blue with flares of fire spaced around the iris. The shadowed eye appeared subdued by comparison. Her eyes peered out at the world from behind old-fashioned cat eye red framed glasses. The red was a darker hue than her hair. Her eyes were such a bright blue, if not for the glasses, I would have assumed she wore colored contacts.
Her lips were full and unadorned with gloss or lipstick. They fit her face and nose. Her lips were neither pursed nor opened. She did not lick at them nervously. They just rested there, beneath her nose, waiting for their next assignment. Her nose had the teeniest little uptick at the tip that kept it from appearing severe. The red hair was coiled in a tight bun at the back of her neck, as it had been every day I had seen her over the past few months.
If I were a casting director looking for a woman to play the secretly hot chick underneath the librarian exterior, I would sign this gal on the spot. It was that juxtaposition of staid and hot that had first caught my attention. Later, it was her self-contained air. She moved as if she was unaffected by the world around her. I found that fascinating and the urge to pierce that containment was irresistible.
Her attire fit with the hair and glasses, understated, professional, not flashy but not dowdy. Her blouse was a simple silk top she wore over a camisole that rendered her bra invisible. Her breasts appeared to be average, the blouse being high enough that it was impossible to assess her cleavage. A simple pencil skirt and fashionable low-heeled pumps completed the outfit. The only hint of flash came from the pale rose stockings and their subtle floral pattern.
My attire, on the other hand, flirted with inappropriate for the office. If not for the fact that I ran my own company, it would be inappropriate. I'd fire anyone else for dressing as I was. That I would parade myself around my employees in such a fashion was a measure of how deeply smitten I was by this young woman. I had spent a great deal of time in my closet that morning, regarding and then discarding most of my wardrobe.
I had settled for a top that was loose rather than tight. I wanted it loose enough that when I leaned toward her, she could see not only my breasts resting in a frilly black open cup bra, but my exposed nipples. The blouse, while not sheer, did not completely hide my naked nipples, even without leaning. My skirt? Now that was skin tight leather, too tight to mar with lines from a garter or thong. I wore stockings but they were hold ups that didn't need a garter. They were black fishnet with a rose stem and thorn pattern up the sides, total slutville. As were my shoes, stiletto heels my husband referred to as "fuck me pumps".